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Brief course description

With modern living being what it is, many of us find ourselves drifting over the surface of our life in something like a trance – a distorted, pale shadow of reality and all its possibilities. It cuts off our sense of connection with our bodies, and all the aliveness and creativity of our true nature. As John O’Donohue said, “Our bodies know that they belong to life; it’s our minds that make our lives so homeless.” We can see, all around, the suffering that results: physical illness, emotional pain, a persistent sense of alienation, broken relationships…

In this course created by Tara Brach, we’ll get to know what it looks like in everyday life, for each one of us, when we go off into trance — and, how we can recover a fuller presence: for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our community and world that so need us to show up. We’ll discover how we can use our thinking mind as a “good servant” of our well-being, rather than a saboteur.

Each of the course’s eleven sections includes at least one experiential exercise helping students to put directly into practice the insights shared during the lectures. These exercises are essentially guided meditations that students often like to continue practicing many times over, long after a course is completed, to maintain and more fully integrate the lessons in their real, embodied, relational lives.

(Read more about this course on the official course page.)

Tara Brach, Ph.D. bio

Tara Brach, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, an internationally known teacher of mindfulness meditation, and author of the bestselling Radical Acceptance and True Refuge. Her podcast exploring the role of mindfulness in the realization of human potential receives more than a million downloads each month.